threshold: the end of a runway
by doroniasobi
Summary: buy me a drink and I'll listen to your woes, if you'll hear mine. — RoyRiza, OC. /for The Jabberer/


**notes** for The Jabberer; happy birthday Jabba. You are the Jabba to my Pororo; never forget who you are.

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><p><strong>threshold: the end of a runway;<strong>

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><p>Their wedding is perfect; her dress is white, his tuxedo is black, and there is cake—chocolate mousse, with cream and vanilla filling and lots of confetti. She throws the bouquet to her sister and basks in perfection when the photos come out clear, when they come out beautifully, as she'd always imagined. Their first dance is clumsy but beautiful, and she swerves around him gracefully, sneaking glances to the people watching. Let them look, she thinks; his ring—a single gold band, with an ancient shine and a rim of the beginnings of rust, of stories never untold and of tales furthermore—is around her finger now. It is hers. It belongs to her; binds him to <em>her<em>. It symbolizes mutual understandings between them, ties them together like stray threads of yarn.

And she feels beautiful that night and he looks beautiful and that's all there is to say about it, when the night closes and the stars litter the sky like the shine on each coin in a world that defies gravity.

On their honeymoon she finds extra wedding invitations; invitations he'd forgotten to hand out, invitations he's been handed back, and on one of them, oddly enough, is wrapped in blue ribbon, smells like tears, and has bits of dog fur sticking to the corner of the border. Near the bottom is small but fine handwriting—and then a small scribble that looks like the beginning of something but ends too quickly and is interrupted by a fine but fickle _Congratulations, Colonel_. He reenters the room while she is still peering at it, and grabs it out of her hands to toss it back in his suitcase with the other invitations.

"Who was that from?" she asks.

"No one important," he says, but his voice is brittle and his knuckles are white and she doesn't believe him one bit. But it's supposed to be a special day, it is, and when they crawl in bed together, she reaches over and clings to him and tells him _I'm sorry_, even though she knows she's not, just to make things right again. He doesn't say anything back, but he lets her pretend that they are perfect anyway, because this is what she's always wanted and he knows that she's not about to let him ruin it for her.

It is a long night, and even though he sleeps next to her, it feels empty and she wonders where exactly she went wrong with it.

.

The other girl turns up a few days later. Her hair is long and blonde and well-cared for, for a woman working for the military. The two of them run into her at the market, when a puppy curls around his ankles and yips excitedly. And his face lights up like she's never seen before, and he picks the pup up, holding it warm against his chest as the dog's muzzle presses tightly into the curve of his elbow like it's finally found home.

He introduces her as Riza Hawkeye and calls her Elizabeth, and they laugh together while the time dissolves in between them and all of a sudden she doesn't belong, not in their conversation, not anywhere, like a puzzle piece from the wrong puzzle. She refuses to think of her as anything but his subordinate. "I've known her for years," he says, when pressed, but this was one of those topics he really did build a wall around, and he couldn't be pressed into giving up.

She'd probably been nothing more than his subordinate, and she _looks_ like a mere acquaintance standing on their doorstep, friendly and firm, with eyes that bore into her own, like they were searching for truth. She looks nothing special, nothing really _there_, and he invites her into his study with nothing more than a blank face. They speak with quiet voices and lace their words with hidden codes she could not decipher, a secret language only the two of them know and speak of.

Then, suddenly, there is nothing, and she stops her sewing from the next room to listen. There is quiet murmuring again, her husband's quiet drone, and the girl called Elizabeth leaves the household with a strained smile and a quick salute. Her puppy scrambles after her and turns to wag his tail before padding down the doorsteps.

And as she turns back around, there is a look in his eyes she's never seen before in the time she's known him. She can't quite find the word for it but it's something important, something he perhaps, he longs for.

"Lieutenant Hawkeye has always been more than a little bit draining to deal with," he murmurs, running a hand back through his scuffed hair.

She doesn't know what to say (it seems she never does) so she wraps her arms around his waist and kisses the nape of his neck. He stares off into the distance, sees the blue skies, and despairs.

.

"Roy," she whispers to him one night. "Come to bed."

He continues to scan his eyes over his paperwork, dark shadows hovering under his eyelids.

"Roy," she calls.

He sighs, closes his eyes, and rubs at his temples. "I'm tired," he tells her. "I'm tired."

"I know." She places her hands on his shoulders. "Come."

"No," he says quietly but firmly. "I'm tired."

She's about to say something else, but he stands up from his wooden chair, yawns, and mutters, "She's going to scold me tomorrow," before he walks and makes his way to the bed.

"Here," she whispers. "Come here, it's cold tonight."

He tells her no, he's always ever slept on the left. She can't help but wonder if this is what all married couples go through after the first few months of marriage.

(That's okay, she tells herself; they'll work it out. They have to.)

.

The day she talks about children is the day he flinches and yells at her.

"I—" he says, frustrated, after he's calmed down. "I'm not ready."

She had never known her husband to shout. Never. He sighs and stands up to walk to the cupboard where the Scotch is, and pours himself a glass. "I'm not ready," he repeats. "I've got work... I've got so many things to do. We can't—we can't possibly have a child. Not... not now."

She is quiet for a few minutes. "Later, then," she decides, because it makes sense; doesn't ever married couple want children? Doesn't he realize that she's still in love with him, that's her life isn't over, that she still wants more from what this marriage promised to be?

There is a knock at the door, and by then she is just as frustrated as he, just as angry. She flings the door open and is greeted by a loud bark and dirty, blonde hair. "Good evening," she murmurs, more out of politeness than being friendly.

Riza Hawkeye smiles apologetically. "I'm sorry for bothering you at this hour—but is the Colonel home? He forgot some of his papers at work today—"

"No," she says curly, running a hand through her short, brown hair. "No, he's not. And thank you, I'll take those to him." She grabs the papers out of her hands and is about to slam the door in her face before Riza stops her.

"Is he—is he _drinking_?" she asks, incredulous. "How can he—why in the world is he _drinking_?"

"I—he... shouldn't be drinking?"

Riza's eyes bore into her own. "He shouldn't," she says icily. "There is a meeting tomorrow, and he simply cannot afford to be hung over. We're... in a dire situation. I..." Riza sighs, and undoes the clip in her hair. "I'm sorry for intruding—but may I see him?"

There is a pause. "Of course."

Riza Hawkeye's lips quirk in a quick smile and she leaves to enter the next room.

And it is always, always her, she realizes; it is always Riza Hawkeye, realizes that perhaps it has always been Riza Hawkeye that is able to break his inertia.

.

The day comes when it becomes hardly a surprise anymore, and she waits until it is quiet behind the door to open it, and the fact that they aren't even speaking to each other makes no difference. Riza Hawkeye is sitting on the couch to the right and Roy Mustang to the left. For a minute, she doesn't know what to feel—here, was the woman who had taken her husband—unintentionally, but absolutely.

So she turns to Mustang, who has at his feet the bottle of whiskey he'd kept in the cellar for years, and Riza's eyes, when they turned to look at her, held no resentment whatsoever.

In the end, that is what sets her off.

Riza Hawkeye stands up abruptly, throws her bag over her shoulder, and strides out. Roy pushes off the couch; "Riza—Lieutenant, _wait—"_ but the front door had already slammed. He almost pushes past her as well, but pauses, puts his hands on her shoulders as gently as he can, but she pushes him away.

"I don't know how you _dare_," she says to him curtly. And, holding herself tightly upright, walked silently to bed. She would not slam doors, would not stamp, and she would not scream. Roy—he could still choose between the two of them. Between the two—her wisteria, her charm and dignity, or Riza Hawkeye's nothing but.

She hears the front door closing behind him, and cries because she knows he already had.

.

Unexpectedly, it happens too fast. Too quickly and too soon.

Terrorists, she hears. A subtle attack from behind when he's under and covering the sides, and there had been a gunshot and a wound and the heavy breathing and the faint tick of a watch. We heard the crunch of his heartbeat, one of them say, and then the odd taste in her mouth is stale breakfast.

And Riza Hawkeye—Riza Hawkeye is alive, she hears. There was blood, and it had poured and poured and poured and just poured, but she was alive.

She visits the blonde-haired woman in the hospital over the next week, and only until she sees her empty eyes, only until she sees the needle and the bandages and the dozens of paramedics and nurses running to attend to her, only until she breaks down, head low, hair falling around the frame of her face like a curtain—and only then, does she realize, what exactly she's lost, and exactly how much it had meant.

And she can't help but wonder—if it gets quiet enough, will she be able to hear his heartbeat, resonating inside hers?

.

"It was you," she whispers. "It was all you. It was your fault."

Riza stares at her and shakes her head slowly. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "but I can't." She hesitates for a long time. "He would have wanted to say sorry. He loved you," she continues, and it doesn't sound true but it is. "He really did."

"He didn't. I know he didn't; he kept going back to you. It—it was always you. He never—never even turned to glance at me, only looked through me to look at you, and—" It comes out in a rush, a painful flood of emotion that racks her body with confusion. It had always been painful—watching him watch her; watching his love for her resonate between them. She was always just watching, wasn't she?

Riza lets out a shuddering breath. "It was a different kind of love," she whispers. "For you. And for me."

And she realizes, finally, as she stares at her retreating back—

There had always been someone who had loved him more than she ever could. And he—

He had always, always been beautiful when he was in love. (And maybe that's what she'd been looking at all along.)

.

In the end, it is still his name she carries around. In the end, everything is still the same. In the end, in Riza Hawkeye's eyes, she can feel him, pulsing and beating and alive.

She visits his grave on a Sunday morning when the sky is clear and the birds are chirping and it is perfect. In the end, she'd gotten the wedding she wanted. In the end, she'd received many, many things from him, be it happiness and a simple joy in the span of a week's time.

"I miss you," she tells him simply—and wonders if she can reset-play her heartbeat to the sound of his, so that they synchronize, at least, from their worlds apart.

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><p><em>Owari<em>

_2011.10.04_


End file.
